Hello everyone. This is Tetsuya Takahashi from Monolith Soft. Today I’d
like to talk about what you’ll see in the Ver. 1.3.0 update for Xenoblade
Chronicles 2 that will be released next week.

First up is the “New Game Plus” mode. This is more than just a way for
people who have cleared the game to play through it a second time.
You’ll find that we’ve added a few new features, as well.

The specific updates you’ll see are:

• The Blades from Torna (Obrona, Sever, Perdido, and Cressidus) can join
the player’s party as Blades

• Akhos, Patroka, and Mikhail from Torna will also be able to join the
player’s party as Blades

You can get them by resonating with Core Crystals (or they will join
your party as you meet them in quests). As you might expect, you could
potentially get them from a Common Core Crystal early in the game, which
kind of wrecks the story, but our goal here is to prioritize making the
game even more fun to play. I hope you can resonate with these Blades
and enjoy having them in your party.

• All Blades can be dispatched on Merc Missions. This means that Blades
like Pyra and Mythra that could not be disengaged from your party during
an initial playthrough can now be dispatched.

• We are adding further growth factors to unlock in the Drivers’
Affinity Charts.

• You can now decrease your Drivers’ level at inns, and will likewise
gain bonus experience according to their decreased level. You can
exchange this bonus experience for special items, including an item that
lets you increase the number of accessory slots available to a Driver.
You can get these items by trading with the Traveling Bards who appear
on each Titan.

• The Level 4 Special of a certain Blade will be unlocked.

There are also five updates that will apply not only to the Advanced New
Game Mode, but to your first playthrough, as well.

• A locking mechanism to lock certain Blades in your party.

You can lock certain Blades from the menu so that they cannot be
released, and to make them more visible. This feature will be useful in
a variety of situations, such as if you get a 4-star Common Blade.

• The option to skip the Blade resonating scene.

• While expanded, the mini-map can display the same icons you have set
up on the Skip Travel screen.

• Easy Mode added to the game difficulty. The original game difficulty
level is Normal Mode. You can change the difficulty level at any time
with the in-game options.

• New sorting options for Accessories, Aux Cores, and Blade Lists.

The following data will carry over to the New Game Plus mode from your
clear save file.

In order to play the New Game Plus mode, you must complete the original
game, and you must have a save file from the save screen that appeared
immediately after the ending.

Using the data you saved after the ending will allow you to keep
playing. You will know that you can play the New Game Plus mode if you
look at the title screen and see that Rex and the others look the way
they did after the ending.

Note that you will not be able to play the New Game Plus mode using save
data from a new game started after completing the game. If you do start
a new game, you will need to clear it again in order to play the New
Game Plus mode.

You probably already noticed this, but you’ll see a symbol on the save
screen that indicates that you’ve completed the game. We’re thinking
about giving a little gift to players who have this symbol at some point
in the near future. Stay tuned!

Alongside the release of the Ver. 1.3.0 update, players who purchased
the Expansion Pass will also receive their fourth set of useful items.

That’s all of the upgrades included in the Ver. 1.3.0 release.

We really wanted to release this earlier, but given that it’s a bit more
than just a regular version update, we needed the extra time for all the
debugging and other extra work. We will continue to have more version
updates after March.

Also, everyone who purchased the Expansion Pass can look forward to a
new Blade and a quest that comes with it, as well as some new battle
content. We’ll provide another update via production notes after we’ve
finalized the release schedule for these.